Julie Benz fans know her by name, but to a host of others, she's "that girl from..." She's played major roles in popular projects, if not a marquee name herself. In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel, she was a powerful vampire, Darla, who turned Angel in the first place. more

Julie Benz fans know her by name, but to a host of others, she's "that girl from..." She's played major roles in popular projects, if not a marquee name herself. In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel, she was a powerful vampire, Darla, who turned Angel in the first place. On Dexter, she's been the title character's loving girlfriend, and now wife, Rita. You may have also seen her in Rambo, Saw V, Jawbreaker or As Good As It Gets.

She was not in The Boondock Saints however. That series did not require her services until the sequel, 10 years later. FBI Agent Eunice Bloom comes to town to investigate the return of the MacManus brothers. After Agent Smecker passed away (because Willem Dafoe did not return), she's the resident expert on the McManus boys, but she's not entirely who she appears to be either. As part of the Boondock Saints style, Eunice recaps the crime scenes and the audience sees her walk through them. She interacts with the flashbacks, strutting between gunmen and firing back.

Benz called in for an interview a week after wrapping Dexter for the year. This season finds marriage and fatherhood spreading Dexter thin. Rita suspects he is cheating on her or doing drugs. If only she knew he was just a murderer. With only her voice to represent herself, Benz was playful, demanding to see us in person. But, we made do with an exclusive phone call to discuss The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.

SuicideGirls: How did you like playing the kickass authority?

Julie Benz: I loved it. I loved it. I had to leave all my vulnerabilities at home and go to work every day and be this strong, sexy woman. I haven't been that in a long time as far as roles that I've played. I've played a lot of victims and love interests, but never this badass, this true badass woman. It was great.

SG: It's true, you used to. Darla was a tough cookie.

JB: Yes, I used to but like everything, you go through phases. It's interesting, the same roles get attracted to you during certain phases in your life so there was a phase where I was the victim or the love interest in everything. Then all of a sudden Eunice comes into my life. It's completely different from anything I've done and a huge challenge, and so much fun to play.

SG: But to be a victim in Dexer or Saw V is not a bad place to explore that.

JB: No, it's definitely not a bad place either. I've been the victim in great material. That's always wonderful. There's nothing wrong with playing the victim. Rita started out very damaged and weak and she has grown strength, but she's still very feminine and soft and vulnerable. She has a lot of vulnerabilities and she pretty much wears her heart on her sleeve. I think that's what makes her so lovely in the series because she's the only one who really is that way. Everybody else has their guard up and has baggage and is jaded. Even though Rita probably has more baggage than anybody else, she still has this very open, optimistic side to her which I think shows her strength. But, then to walk into a role like Eunice who can take on any guy in the room and can take them on intellectually and physically is a whole different energy that I get to tap into.

SG: Do you see her as filling the Willem Dafoe role?

JB: Well, obviously, she fills the role of the FBI agent role coming in. I can't fill Willem Dafoe's shoes. I don't know anybody who can. I like to make a joke that Willem wears a 10 and I'm a size 7. There's just no way I can fill those shoes. All I can do is play Eunice to the best of my ability. I think Eunice stands alone in the bible of the story, in the bible of the script. She stands alone as her own character.

SG: How did you come up with the accent and red hair?

JB: It was all [director] Troy [Duffy]'s vision, the hair and everything. Troy wanted me to have red hair and he wanted this very specific accent. I worked really hard on the accent. Accents are not natural for me. I skyped every night with my dialect coach as well as typed out all my material phoenetically every single day. Then just prayed to God that it would be there. I lived with the accent for about three months where any time you talked to me, that's how I talked.

SG: How much of her body language was yours, or directed by Troy?

JB: I literally walked off set on season three of Dexter on our last day of filming and got in an airplane and walked right onto set in Toronto into Eunice. I had no time to get rid of Rita and bring on a new character.

SG: Her body language is very specific though with her strut and her neck crack.

JB: First of all, I think the shoes had a lot to do with it. I insisted on wearing very high heels. I mean, it wasn't much of an insistence but there were very specific shoes that I wanted to wear because it just completely changes my energy when I'm in a certain type of shoe. Then Troy gave me some very specific guidelines as far as what he wanted. In the beginning, he did help craft a lot of physicality, but then all of a sudden it became natural.

SG: Did you feel sexy in the uniform?

JB: Wow, I mean, I'm carrying a holster and a gun. Yeah, I felt hot. 6" stiletto heels, who doesn't?

SG: Did you get a chance to go to the shooting range?

JB: Not really. There was a moment where I had a little bit of some shooting but that was about it. Since I've wrapped the movie I've gone to the shooting range. Actually, I shoot to kill, I discovered.

SG: Had you been looking for a gunplay action heroine?

JB: Yeah, I mean, it's fun to play these tough women, these badass women that can handle the weapons. It's just fun. It's just an added extra thing to learn. I mean, I now know how to twirl pistols.

SG: A lot of your projects became cult hits. When you go into a series that's already got a cult following, do you feel like, "Okay, I've got this. I know this world."?

JB: I don't necessarily think about that aspect of it. It's more I went into this thinking about Eunice Bloom. I wasn't familiar with The Boondock Saints before I got the role and when they sent me the script, no one told me it was a sequel. The script was sent to me and it was titled All Saints Day. It actually was a really great script, so I didn't know it was a sequel. I had no clue about what Boondock Saints was until after I got the role. Then I discovered the following that it has. It makes sense. It makes perfect sense.

SG: Is there a crossover between this audience and your other work?

JB: I think so, definitely. There were some fans that were a little hesitant because they've only known me as playing Rita on Dexter and they're afraid it's going to be this vulnerable kind of character. They don't understand that it's not. So I hope I change their opinion.

SG: Also, you're an actor.

JB: Right, but if you're only familiar with a certain amount of my work then I don't blame anybody. If you're only familiar with one side of me as an actor and you haven't seen the other side, then it's not your fault that's all you see. It's up to me to prove myself and show that I'm something else.

SG: How does Dexter's following compare to Buffy and Angel?

JB: I think it's the same except unfortunately, with Buffy and Angel in the United States we aired on The WB which was predominantly a teenage network. I don't think we had as wide of an audience as we could have had if, say, we had aired on a major network. I think there's people that have discovered the show on DVD afterwards that didn't watch it because it was solely on The WB. But I think Dexter has that same audience. It has this wide audience. Well, the Buffy/Angel audience obviously has grown up and they're at the age where they're big fans of Dexter now.

SG: Obviously Rita is just thinking about her marriage. Do you ever look in from the outside see Rita as a force trying to normalize Dexter?

JB: No. I mean, I see that. I understand that intellectually but when I'm playing her, I really just play what's on the page. She's just a woman trying to save her marriage basically. I don't really think about the fact that he's a serial killer and all that because Rita doesn't know that. She doesn't know she's trying to normalize him. She's afraid he's either cheating on her or using drugs again. That's it. That's where her head goes. And that's normal. If you were with somebody and they started sneaking around and you found an apartment, would your head go to serial killing? No, your head would go to cheating or drug use, wouldn't it?

SG: A part of me thinks she'd be okay with the truth, since he's only killing bad guys. As long as it's not cheating or using.

JB: Well, is it okay? I don't know if she would say that. I actually don't think she would ever believe it. But let's hope we never have to answer that question.

SG: Never? You don't think the show will ever have her find out?

JB: I mean, they might. Obviously, they probably will. I just personally believe that even if you showed Rita all the evidence, even if you showed her the show and said, "We've been following your husband around. This is what he does in his free time." She would say that's not him. That's not him. It's not out of naivety or stupidity but out of love and strength because when you share your body with someone and your soul and you create a life and you create a human life with that person, it's a reflection of who you are. I think the human condition, we're not equipped to handle that kind of reflection.

SG: Isn't it great we can analyze her like this?

JB: Yes, and I love the people that think if Rita found out, they'd become like Bonnie and Clyde. That's so romantic but I highly doubt that would ever happen.

SG: I also noticed you play a receptionist in As Good As It Gets. Were you the one who asked Jack how he writes women so well?

JB: Yes.

SG: Did you sense at the time that that would be a trailer moment?

JB: No, I actually was hoping it wasn't going to get edited out. When the trailer hit, when the first trailer aired on TV, I remember I was shooting some television show. I forget which one. I went into work and someone goes, "Oh, I saw you in the trailer for As Good as It Gets." I went, "No, that's Helen Hunt. She's the star of the movie. I have one little scene. There's no way you would see me in the trailer." They were like, "No, no, no, it was you." And I'm like, "No, it's not." The next thing you know, I saw it and was like oh my God, it's me. It was a huge honor and completely unexpected. When it came out I heard everybody's bad Jack Nicholson for a good two years.

SG: Did you hear any good ones?

JB: No, because Jack is Jack. No one can do Jack. No one can and they all think they can. The guy at the makeup counter of Saks thought he did a great one and he made me do the scene with him. I got a lot of that.

SG: It's amazing how everyone thinks they should try it on you.

JB: Yeah, and they want to act the scene with me. It's really like uh, well, since I acted with the real thing, why would I want to do it with you?

SG: You became the judge and arbiter of Jack impressions.

JB: And I only spent like half a day with him.

SG: Are you wrapped on Dexter?

JB: I am. I wrapped last week.

SG: Is there a good finale?

JB: It's an amazing finale this season. This season the storyline just kind of slowly builds and builds and builds until this big giant crescendo at the end. It's going to leave you wanting more. It's going to leave you wanting season five.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day opens Friday. Dexter airs Sunday nights on Showtime.

Even though the first film found a passionate following, Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was a movie most people bet would never happen. The fact that you might not have heard of Boondock Saints 1 was only a small hurdle facing the sequel. Writer/director Troy Duffy made the original through sweat... more

Even though the first film found a passionate following, Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was a movie most people bet would never happen. The fact that you might not have heard of Boondock Saints 1 was only a small hurdle facing the sequel. Writer/director Troy Duffy made the original through sweat and bravado, forcing his vision into existence. Some critics think his difficulties were his own doing.

Harvey Weinstein offered Duffy a production deal based on his script for The Boondock Saints. Ultimately, Weinstein dropped the film. The plot thickens, however, as there is a documentary film chronicling Duffy's struggles with Weinstein. Using behind the scenes footage they shot during Boondock's development, Filmmakers Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith compiled Overnight. Their documentary portrays Duffy burning his own bridges, screaming at Miramax executives on speaker phone and bullying his way through a film deal, unsuccessfully.

Duffy's reputation was only one of the reasons it took 10 years to make a sequel. The Troy Duffy who called in this week didn't sound like the monster Overnight portrayed. A confident man with strong opinions, yes, but not volatile. Maybe he was on good behavior, maybe he's just mellowed out or maybe you have to get to know the man to really paint a portrait of him. He certainly didn't shy away from the juicy details of his struggles in the 10 years between Boondock films.

What was the film that caused all this hoopla? The Boondock Saints was about Boston brothers (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) who decide to clean up the town, killing the local hoodlums. Boondock Saints II picks up the brothers retired in Ireland with their father, Il Duce (Billy Connelly). The murder of a Boston priest brings them home to set things right again. With a new partner (Clifton Collins Jr.) and an FBI agent (Julie Benz) on their tail, this is the next level of Boondock action.

SuicideGirlsG: How many times did Boondock II almost start before it finally got going for real?

Troy Duffy: Before we actually got a deal on it, three.

SG: How did the script change each time?

TD: I think during maybe the first deal, there was the potential of getting Willem back. That script was kind of out there but never really happened. Then we changed it and took his character out. Willem and I sort of agreed that you couldn't really do much more with old Smecker because once you show a guy in a dress and he goes over to the dark side, what else can you do? So the script changed dramatically after that but virtually right after that was our shooting script.

SG: Is that where Julie's character came in?

TD: Sure, sure, in a way. Her character just kind of fell out of the sky. I didn't write it for any particular reason. We wanted to give her her own thing, not just make her a watered down chick version of Smecker. So we tried to have this woman retain her femininity in an obvious man's world, even use it as a weapon sometimes. I didn't write Eunice [as a surrogate for] Smecker.

SG: What did you learn from your first production to make the second one easier once you got it going?

TD: All kinds of things. The major one, if you want to really simplify something that we could talk about eight hours for, down into one little news bite, I learned that you reserve your creativity and passion for the creative side of this business and you have to play the politics on the financial side of it. These people that are investing millions of dollars in your film need to know that somebody with a good head on his shoulders is going to get them their investment back. So I've delineated between the two things. Now my passion is just for filmmaking and when I'm sitting with financial people, I often play the politics that are involved with that.

SG: I saw Overnight and I know how editing can spin it, but you're on camera doing some outrageous things. Do you take any responsibility for your Hollywood conflicts?

TD: Sure, a little. Making a film is a very hard thing to do. Anybody that tells you it just goes perfectly and everybody loves each other at the end of the day is pretty much full of shit.

SG: No one believes those people.

TD: Yeah, but now we've gone to the other extreme with a film like Overnight and now we're supposed to believe this? It doesn't happen like that. You can edit something together and not provide the context in which things are said - who, what, where, why and when and just get people hating a guy. It's a very easy thing to do. I think the biggest shame of it all is that these two guys were friends of mine. They came to me and said, "Can we do this documentary on you?' It was their idea. They requested permission. We granted it to them and they said, "Don't worry. We're your friends. We'd never fuck you." Over and over again. That's exactly what they did. Unfortunately, they didn't learn the very lesson they filmed me learning which was that making a film is a very difficult endeavor. It's a hard thing to do. You add into that the music that we were also trying to make in the mix, it becomes damn close to impossible but we did it. I achieved the goals that I set out to do. I set out as a complete newbie in this business to make a film and a record on our terms and that's what we did. By watching that film, you have no idea of how I did it and that's a shame because it's a pretty interesting little story and I'm sure a bunch of young filmmakers could have watched the mistakes I made, were they honestly portrayed, and learned something from it. But, they would have also watched all the mistakes I didn't make, all the things that I did right. I mean, I must have done something right.

SG: And there are successful people known for being aggressive, like Michael Bay or James Cameron. How do you taper that as needed?

TD: You just have to have as much knowledge about the lay of the land as possible. Some things are easy. Some things get a little difficult. You have to know who knows who, what relationships are to what relationships, what people's motivations are. To me, it's just a matter of respecting business etiquette now. When I'm in rooms full of businessmen, I go with the business side of Troy. When a room's full of actors, I go with passion. That's what they respond to.

SG: To discuss the filmmaking side of Boondock, were there bigger stunts this time?

TD: Yeah, there were bigger stunts, bigger guns, bigger body count. That's just kind of the three Bs of sequels. You've got to give them everything they love about the first movie except bigger, badder and better. For my money, you have to give them a brand new story, like something that throws curve balls at 'em that they could never see coming. Cleanest example is Terminator 2. Suddenly Arnold's the good guy protecting Sarah Connor. We didn't see that coming and it was an extremely risky move for the filmmakers to take but they showed some balls and did it and we ate it up. It was the next thing that they made cool for us and that's what I've tried to do in the story of Boondock Saints. There's a female lead in Boondock Saints. Curve ball. The boys pick up a Hispanic American on the way in. Curve ball. We go into period piece flashbacks of how Il Duce became a killer. Curve ball. These are things Boondock fans are not used to seeing but this is the new story. This is the new thing we're going to make cool.

SG: And sequels have to deal with the fans' expectations. They discovered the first one as a surprise, but how do you deal with the sequel they've each imagined on their own ever since?

TD: Sure, I'm sure that that happened. I can't imagine what they were imagining because writing this thing was like trying to crack the code on a safe, you know. It was like Boondock fans know that movie in absolute minutia. We had to write and execute a film that respected that sacred ground. So you're not really free to just sit down and put pen to paper and do anything you want. It's kind of like writing with shackles on.

SG: Is Mexican standoff Russian roulette the ultimate badass combination?

TD: [Laughs] Yeah, we actually do that a couple of times.

SG: How did you come up with that scene?

TD: I don't know, man. These things just fall out of the sky and into my head. I wish I could tell you I get this particular kind of cheese and wine and I like these particular kinds of candles and put on my fuckin' Hugh Heffner smoking jacket, turn out all the lights and channel the Meducci family. I don't know how any of that stuff happens. It's just through raw working. Sometimes I'll just be walking around and get an idea. I don't know. To me, the creative process is about sort of paying attention to your everyday life and living it and shit will happen. I've never been the victim of writer's block, for instance.

SG: Will you continue being the Boondock Saints filmmaker or would you do other projects?

TD: Yeah, over the last 10 years while we've all been sort of trying to put Boondock together and then actually did it, I've written four other scripts and hopefully if I play my cards right, I can just knock 'em down like bowling pins, man. The first one that I'm hoping to get done is this movie called The Good King which is a buddy flick. Takes place in the 1500s about a king and a duke who are best of friends and they're womanizers and drunks and sort of idiot savants when they're hammered. They virtually destroy and resurrect the British Empire during one reign.

SG: What genres are the other three?

TD: One's a serial killer film. One has to do with mass hypnosis and the other one is based on a historical figure.

SG: Would you say the Boondock style can apply to all of those?

TD: To me, a filmmaker's responsibility is to do the right things for the story. I see new things happening in these scripts. That's what I'm excited about. Now, if we have to have gunfights or things that are Boondock related, will my particular moviemaking style from Boondock show up in that? Sure. I just don't know how you can avoid that. It's part of me. That's how I do things. That's how I see things. But these are all very, very different stories. Following up Boondock with a period piece buddy comedy, that's at the other end of the spectrum. It doesn't really have much to do with Boondock but that's what's interesting about it to me. I want to spread my wings a little bit and try some new stuff that I'm excited about and do it in a new way.

SG: When could a third Boondock happen?

TD: There's the possibility of that. I've got some things in the hopper, just thinking about it. But, that will be years away if at all. I liked leaving the first one the way we did with a cliffhanger and I always knew that we were going to do this sequel. In doing a three, that code to that safe is going to be a bitch to crack. So I'm going to need a couple of years of thinking about that in order to make something that lives up to Boondock 1 and 2.

SG: Could a deal on the third one be easier?

TD: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Especially after this one comes out. I don't want to seem overconfident but I've just gone to the east coast on a little press tour and I got to see this film with three Boondock Saints fan audiences: Boston, New York and Philly. I know what the fans response is right now. I've gotten my answer. This is a big one.

SG: But crossing the hurdle of 2, you can talk franchise now.

TD: Sure, sure. That's all nice to think about but at the end of the day, the public will tell you how good your fuckin' movie is. We all love to think we know. Every critic loves to be able to go, "Hey, this film sucks because of this" or "This film will succeed and be huge. This is the action film of the year because of this." Ultimately though, those things are the possession of the public. They're going to tell you by spending their money on your film, their hard earned money I might add, how good your movie is. They've already told me that, about 1300 of them have told me that over the last couple of days. I've seen their reactions to this and I've seen what they do afterwards. I know we got one here.

SG: It actually killed in a little screening too.

TD: Oh yeah? You know what the funny thing is? I've been hearing like, "Yeah, I was at a critic's screening so it's always lame and shit."You actually had a good one, huh?

SG: Particularly the line "Who ordered the whoopass fajitas" brought the house down.

TD: [Laughs] You know what though? The line that follows it, "Ding dong motherfucker," I believe that's the one that's going to be in the sort of American vernacular now with kids that are Boondock fans. You can actually say that to anything. Since it doesn't mean anything, that can be your response to virtually everything that's asked of you.

SG: How, if at all, did your music inform your filmmaking?

TD: I would say you write one film, you direct a second, you edit a third. That's a well known quote in the industry. To me, you musically infuse a fourth. The music to us on this one, we didn't have much money, so we decided to just go fuckin' balls out. We went out to bars and found musicians, new ones, unsigned acts. My brother happens to be a very talented musician and I shipped him out here and put him in a studio, made him record one of the songs that he does that I love. It was a band called The Dirges. I just happened to drink with them down at the bar and I've seen their shows a million times. They're great, Irish, anti-authority. When I was a kid, I found a guy at a bar called The Falcon on Poinsettia and Sunset named Ty Stone who recently was signed with Atlantic Records. But I just saw him playing at the bar and tapped right into what he was doing. We snagged two of his songs for the film. Now this soundtrack, you're not going to recognize any of the names on. They're all brand new so they're all starting out, sort of just like Boondock. We decided to make this one sort of a Boondock related moment in time type of a soundtrack and that's what we did.

SG: How about as far as your own band?

TD: I think my music gene is going to be satisfied by doing music in my films from now on. Music business was a little rough for us. I think it's actually tougher than the film business at the end of the day. I don't know that I have the time to do it as much as I would like to, you know. It's that old serving two masters thing.

SG: Was it hard to make Boondock II look like Boondock I 10 years later?

TD: No, no. We kind of appreciated the advances in film a little bit and we used some new visual techniques. We used this film damage technique when the brothers fantasize about what a perfect gig would be. We used a different film technique when we went into the period piece flashbacks, 1950s New York. The whole film looks different.

SG: That's new stuff. The main body of the film still looks like Boondock.

TD: Oh yeah. We tried to keep the new sort of techniques and new visual playing around with the new part of the story. When it came to filming the brothers, fuckin' classic works. If it ain't broke!

SG: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

TD: Yeah, I'd just like to say to Boondock fans that this sequel is like taking a Playboy playmate to the senior prom and then banging her and her twin sister afterwards.

Visit the site for Boondock Saints 2: All Saint's Day The film will be in theaters October 30, 2009.

See the first 5 minutes of Boondock Saints 2 now

An interview with Edward Norton is rare. He usually does not discuss his acting work in the press. Universal may have forced him on a couple talk shows to promote The Incredible Hulk but the only other projects he’s made Hollywood rounds for were The Painted Veil and, oddly, Death to Smoochy. Norton... more

An interview with Edward Norton is rare. He usually does not discuss his acting work in the press. Universal may have forced him on a couple talk shows to promote The Incredible Hulk but the only other projects he’s made Hollywood rounds for were The Painted Veil and, oddly, Death to Smoochy.

Norton engaged the press again to discuss the documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama. Norton produced the chronicle of Obama’s historic election, from the beginnings of his candidacy to his win on November fourth. HBO will air it beginning November 3.

Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams could not have had the foresight to know the documentary would culminate in a win. The project started as just a profile of a historic candidacy. Norton actually thought it would take six years for his presidential campaign to succeed.

“Our initial presentation of it was just that he represented a generational shift in national politics,” Norton told the press conference. “We thought there was value in documenting his experiences as he entered the political fray. We didn’t set out to make a campaign film but I think at a certain point, it became clear to us that it was a document of how this momentous piece of history was achieved from a certain perspective.”

Once the Obama campaign picked up momentum, Norton and the filmmakers knew they were at the forefront of capturing history in the making. Whatever Obama is able to achieve in the next four years, and no matter what he cannot, Norton feels the film captures the important moment.

“I don't think anything will ever diminish the significance of the achievement of his election,” Norton continued. “I think sometimes you have to take the broad lens with a piece of work like this and say that maybe it’s a noble and fine ambition for it to be just a good document of how a certain moment transpired so that people can look back on it. Whatever the ultimate review of his presidency, people can say this moment was a singular moment in American history and here’s at least one document of how it was experienced, how it transpired, how it came to fruition.”

After the press conference, Norton hung around to chat with a group of reporters a little bit more about the documentary. Those expecting gruff, intense resistance were instead treated to a lively open discussion about politics and filmmaking. Perhaps those were the skills required to secure the filmmakers access to Obama’s campaign.

“In the beginning it was [Robert] Gibbs, who was his press secretary as a senator,” Norton said in one more press conference anecdote. “When it became a campaign, there was a whole new level of hurdle to clear because [David] Axelrod and [David] Plouffe were completely negative on the idea. Axelrod in particular was vehemently opposed to anything because he’s very savvy and probably rightly didn’t think that they needed to make themselves vulnerable to that. I was calling him on the phone trying to, I don’t want to say spin it, but explain it, rationalize it as in some sense what it became, saying this is not something that has an intention to affect the outcome. We just want to document this.”

With that background, Norton continued the discussion in the hallway of the Langham hotel in Pasadena, CA. Any passersby would be hard pressed to figure out a group of reporters were interviewing a movie star. It looked more like a friendly leader, in casual blue jeans and plain white shirt, holding court amongst friends.

Question: How would you articulate the importance of this election? Was it just that he is the first African president?

Edward Norton: Just? Just the first African American president? That’s a little reductive. You don’t think that’s one of the three or five biggest moments in American political history?

Q: Obviously it is. What I meant was is there more to his importance than that? Would you care to expand?

EN: Well, I think it’s pretty self-evident. I think that the election of the first African American president is pretty simply put. I think it speaks for itself as a seminal moment in American history.

Q: What was the highlight of the project for you?

EN: That’s a good question. I think there were certain moments in it, at each of the moments when we realized that in fact he was actually going to achieve the next rung. When it became clear that he was going to become the candidate, if you had started where we started and known him at the moment, it just was thrilling. It was thrilling in a selfish sense because I just couldn’t believe that we were as intimately inside the process of watching this take place. So each time he achieved the next rung I think we all kind of felt almost head spun by it and it felt like a great privilege to have covered it somehow.

Q: Did you get new respect for American democracy through this experience?

EN: I did actually, yeah. I think it’s one of my favorite things. Actually, a lot of people have said to me about the film that they understood the Iowa caucus for the first time watching the film which I feel like that in itself is a minor achievement because I think that whole section of the film about Iowa is a great portrait of American democracy in all of its wonderful messiness.

Q: How much were you out on the campaign trail with the filmmakers?

EN: It’s hard to explain. Not that much. I was kind of more like wrangling access.

Q: How instrumental were you in convincing Obama to let you in?

EN: Pretty directly from the get go. We went down and saw him. He was very gracious and I actually think he had a lot to do with us being allowed to stay in the mix when the campaign started. At one point I said to him, “If this kicks off, there will be a lot of people around you who will tell you to push us out.” And I said, “Please don’t let them do it.” I think he had a very direct role in pushing back on his own campaign heads and saying, “I think we should let this continue.”

Q: Were there any moments where he said, “No, not now?”

EN: Well, there’s one in the film. If you see the film, when he’s getting his haircut.

Q: How do you feel about what he’s accomplished in his first year in office, with the stimulus, closing Guantanamo, his mortgage crisis plans?

EN: I wouldn’t say that our film has anything to do with that. The film is a document of I think the process of his campaign and his movement achieving the White House. I think there’s really nothing about it that’s in any way a comment on anything after that.

Q: As an environmental activist, what do you think of his environmental policies?

EN: I mean, I have a lot of personal opinions but I don't think they’re really germane to the film per se and our releasing of it. I’m not really here to comment on Obama’s successes or failures.

Q: What are you doing personally for environmental causes?

EN: I mean, I work on a lot of different things along those lines. That’s something I think I’ve, in a pretty demonstrative way been an advocate for environmental [initiatives.]

Q: What’s the most pressing issue right now?

EN: I think that’s a complex question. I think certainly you could argue that carbon loading in the atmosphere is kind of the biggest macro problem but collapsed fisheries, anything. There are an awful lot and they’re pretty interlinked.

Q: Do you plan to follow the documentary with another one on Obama?

EN: No, no, not in particular. The documentary will come out on DVD and stuff but I don't know that there’s a sequel to that in particular. We don’t have a plan to cover his second bid for the presidency or anything like that. This was an experience that was kind of lightning in a bottle. It snowballed and we happened to be there to catch it. I think it was a pretty unique opportunity. I don’t expect to have an opportunity like that too many times.

Q: This year is the 10th anniversary of Fight Club. How do you reflect on that important film?

EN: I mean, all of us who were involved in it love that film and I think the best films are the ones that form their own relationship with an audience over time, that kind of escape the vicissitudes of critical and box office reaction in the short term and find their own way to their audience over time. I think that film certainly feels like one of those ones that rippled out from pure person to person and became what it became more through people’s relationship with it than through any kind of intermediary like a critic or anything like that.

By The People: The Election of Barack Obama premiers Tuesday, Nov. 3rd on HBO.

J.C. Hutchins' techno-thriller novel 7th Son: Descent hits bookshelves today, but the story has already had a long life as a popular podcast. The audiobook versions of Hutchins' 7th Son trilogy have been downloaded and enjoyed by tens of thousands of listeners, which caught the eye of St. Martin's... more

J.C. Hutchins' techno-thriller novel 7th Son: Descent hits bookshelves today, but the story has already had a long life as a popular podcast. The audiobook versions of Hutchins' 7th Son trilogy have been downloaded and enjoyed by tens of thousands of listeners, which caught the eye of St. Martin's Press. Now you can hold the first volume of 7th Son in your hot little hands, knowing you're part of something that's been in the making since 2002.

The story follows the lives of seven strangers who are brought together in a government lab, only to discover they are all clones of the same man. Not only that, but the man they were cloned from is a remorseless killer with access to some mind-bending technology. Human cloning only scratches the surface of the action in 7th Son. Hutchins' rendering of the interactions between the seven clones, each with distinct personalities, is masterful.

If that's not enough to tantalize you, you can grab a free PDF of the novel, and check out a series of seven audio prequels, 7th Son: 7 Days, that explores the lives of the clones before their abduction.

Meanwhile, Suicide Girls sat down with Hutchins to get the story on 7th Son: Descent, the future of the trilogy, and even a possible Hollywood movie.

Jay Hathaway: 7th Son already has a big following from its release as a podcast, but for everyone who's starting with the print edition, what's this book all about?

J.C. Hutchins: 7th Son is a modern-day thriller with science-fiction elements in it. It's in the same genre as a Michael Crichton book. 7th Son is about seven guys who live in different parts of the country, who are kidnapped after the president is mysteriously murdered by a 4-year-old boy. They're brought together at a super-secret government facility, where they are told that, despite some cosmetic differences, they have been unwitting participants in a human cloning experiment. And yes indeed, they look the same. Some are fat, some are thin, but they're cut from the same cloth, and they have the same recorded childhood memories from birth to age 14. They've been a part of a nature vs. nurture experiment called Project 7th Son. They were never intended to know that they were part of this project, and they were never intended to be brought together but the folks who founded this experiment discovered who was behind the murder of the president. It is their genetic progenitor, the original John Michael Smith, the guy whose memories and flesh they share. They were cloned from him, and they've been brought together to track him down and figure out what he's up to next.


JH: So, you're sitting down to write your first novel, and you decide "I'm going to have seven protagonists?" Isn't one hard enough to write?

JCH: 7th Son started as a concept for a superhero comic. Not just any superhero comic, but a team superhero comic, like Justice League of America. The concept was to tell the story of seven guys who were cloned from a grizzled old war veteran. A general in his 80's or something like that. The best damned war hero from World War II. They had his recorded childhood memories, and they had superpowers. There was going to be an issue with them wrestling with memories from the early 20th century, while living in the 21st century and having capes and spandex and rayguns and all that. I used to report for Wizard, the comics magazine, and I encountered comic book scripts from masters like Alan Moore and Warren Ellis. I was like, "There's just no way." I was so familiar with prose writing, 'cause I was a journalist at the time, that I didn't think I had it in me at the time to write a script format. So I decided, "Let's write it as a prose novel." I didn't think that the superhero genre ‚ I've been proven wrong since ‚ wouldn't really stand up in prose fiction format. So let's make these guys everymen. So really what it was is that I came up with the title "7th Son," and I was like "Well, what does that mean?" And then it went from there to the super hero team concept, and now it's still kind of a superhero story, it's just that these guys are far more normal, despite their extraordinary origins. I guess if I can write a book with seven protagonists, I can do anything now. I can't wait to write my next book, it's going to be about a guy peeling a label off of a beer bottle, and that's going to be it.

JH: With no verbs.

JCH: With no verbs! It's just going to be him sitting and pondering paint drying, or something. Yeah, it was kind of challenging, but one of the things I've learned is that having so many characters in a particular room, you have to think like a camera. You have to make sure that the reader is reminded that there are people in this room. You have to bounce from one character to another and glance and do all this, so that really helped me paint the visual picture of a scene, and helped me understand that you can't give characters short shrift in these scenes. Everyone has to contribute.

JH: Different readers are going to be drawn to different clones, and you must have favorites yourself. How do you decide how much screen time to give each character?

JCH: Yeah! The characters who have more screen time are the characters that I personally liked. There are a few characters, like the character who was formerly called Jonathan [in the original 7th Son podcast], now called Jay ‚ I just didn't find him very interesting. [laughs] How can I put this in more diplomatic terms? I think the more odd or everyman‚ it's either of two extremes: the well-grounded individual such as John gets a lot of screen time, because he's probably one of the most easy to identify with for most people. But these characters represent different facets of people's reactions to human cloning. And so, the priest ‚ a great many people in this country are religious and spiritual, and I felt obligated to have a priest represent the struggle that these folks might have, and the dialogue that we might have someday when human cloning is real ‚ because that's such rich territory, he gets a lot of screen time. And of course, the crazy person, the oddity, Kilroy 2.0 the computer hacker gets a lot of screen time because he's so interesting, because he's so broken. He has his own kind of transformation throughout the story.

JH: And because, when you recorded it, you had fun doing his voice?

JCH: [laughs] I sure did! I totally did. That was one of the challenges of doing the 7th Son podcast the first time around, back in 2006. What do these people sound like? I never considered myself a voice actor before I started doing 7th Son, but one of the things I realized is that if I were to simply read their dialogue and not put a performance into it, it may be hard to aurally track who's who. I don't know where Kilroy's voice came from. When I was writing the novel years ago, that's not the voice he had in my mind, but it just kind of happened. Frankly, I'm glad it did, because people seem to love his performance.

JH: Which clone's attitude about cloning most closely aligns with yours?

JCH: Wow. Um. I'll kind of go down the list. John has a very secular reaction to it, like "I am not a unique snowflake, and that kind of sucks." He's alarmed. Father Thomas has a crisis of faith. Michael the Marine seems absolutely nonplussed. He's just a "take life as it comes" kind of guy. Kilroy 2.0 celebrates the fact that, after being a conspiracy theorist, he is actually conspiracy himself. He personifies it. He loves it. Jay kind of looks into the governmental and regulatory issues of all this, and the legality of it. Jack represents the ethics argument: just because we can do this, scientifically, doesn't mean we should.

For me, I'm okay with human cloning.I think that this is going to happen, and I have a really open mind about it. I think that we'll certainly see organ harvesting hailing from human cloning. Will we ever see the kind of full-body replacement that is seen in 7th Son? Well, that greatly hinges on the ability on the ability to record human memories and implant them in a human brain, which is also seen in the book. When that happens, the legality of ‚ if you've got a 90-year-old version of yourself, who has opted into the cloning and memory injection process, you would basically have a 20-year-old version of yourself, with a 90-year-old's experiences in his mind. What happens to the 90-year-old person? Does he relinquish his possessions and his marital status and all of the things that come with that? Those are the things that are going to be the hardest for us to wrap our heads around. Does he opt in to euthanize himself?

JH: It's interesting that the book is coming out in the middle of a huge national healthcare debate in the U.S. So if human cloning is the answer to anything, people are going to ask ... who pays for it? This technology you're writing about can't be cheap.

JCH: Ha! Right. And I know this is the conspiracy theorist in me speaking, but I'm absolutely convinced that an institution has already started cloning humans. How could that not be? But the human cloning thing isn't really the issue, because you're just replicating flesh. We could clone a person and raise him like you would any other child, and because of the whole nature/nurture thing, you would have a completely unique and completely different person. The real ethical debate for me is the concept of recording human memories. I don't think we're going to be there for a while, but human ingenuity ... it's gonna happen.

JH: Do you think that readers 25 years from now will find the controversial parts of 7th Son commonplace or kind of quaint?

JCH: God help us if it is! And I don't really mean that in a serious way. But I do think that cloning human flesh, if it hasn't already happened, it will. We've already figured out how to destroy memories. One of the technologies in the book is called Nepth Charge, and that will wipe out a person's memories completely. I'm sure that one could do that with a ray or a sonic whatever. There's got to be a way to create that kind of ruination in a human's mind. I'm not even addressing the ethics of it, I think that's rotten. Injecting memories into a blank brain or even a healthy brain ... that's the thing that we may see within 50 or 100 years. The question will be, if we can record a human memory, do we really need this meat machine that we are occupying? Are there more efficient ways that we can exist, without requiring a biological sack?

One of the things that inspired 7th Son was a book written by Ray Kurzweil called The Age of Spiritual Machines, in which he talks about human consciousness, and our consciousness existing on a kind of neural Internet. If we can record human consciousness, why would we need to exist in the real world, when we could exist in a neural, virtual world. That got me thinking about recording human memories and using that in 7th Son. Really, we're either going to one of two ways: either we'll figure out a way to traverse the need for a flesh sack, or we'll put memories into human brains and see the technology that we see in 7th Son.

JH: What's the status of the other two books in the trilogy? Do they have release dates yet?

JCH: We don't know. One of the things that is so critical about 7th Son's release is that the first book in the series is the only one to have been picked up for release at this time. A lot is riding on this, because it requires the book to become either a critical or a sales success to justify the additional expense of acquiring the sequels. I'm turning to my fans, both old and new, and saying, "These are stakes. If you want the sequels in print, there's only one thing to do, and that is to bring it!"

JH: How about the movie adaptation of 7th Son? Any progress there?

JCH: The trilogy has been optioned by Warner Brothers. I'm certain the studio will be looking at how this book does with sales. It's moved from being an option to being "in development." That means it's been announced by the production company, Unique Features. These are the dudes that produced the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I, Robot. They know how to adapt big stories into film. The last I heard from my film agent ‚ and this was a month or two ago‚ was that a screenwriter had been assigned to it, and that he was nearly completion of the first draft.

JH: Who do you think could play all seven of these guys?

JCH: When I was writing 7th Son, I never had a person in mind. A lot of writers will mentally cast their characters as they write them, and sometimes even include descriptions like, "He looked like Harrison Ford." For me, I never had a mental image, besides basically an anybody. The only actor I ever thought of while I was writing 7th Son was General Hill, who is a very imperious, tall and commanding military dude in the book. I thought of the guy who played President Palmer in 24. I think he would be a great General Hill. Now, after the fact, I'd love Ryan Reynolds to play the clones. Ryan Reynolds is best known as being a comedian, but he's also been in some great action pictures. He's ripped, he's a good-looking guy, he's funny, and he was also in a comedy in which he wore a fat suit ‚ so hey, there's Kilroy. I think he has the charisma to pull it off. Frankly, I wouldn't kick Brad Pitt out of eating crackers in this bed. Or Will Smith. They could change it to Jane Alpha and hire Angelina Jolie, that's fine by me.

JH: For fans of the podcast, has anything about the plot changed for the print edition?

JCH: The only small regret I had about the 7th Son Book One manuscript that I recorded in 2006 was that we hear a lot about the villains in conversations with our heroes, but we don't see the villains until at least the halfway point of the book. I thought it would be a good idea to see them earlier in the novel. I actually wrote two completely new chapters‚ you haven't seen 'em, you haven't heard 'em ‚ that are basically the machinations of the villains. We get to seem them doing horrible things to people. I wanted to introduce them early in the story to personify the threat and create more dread about what they were up to.

JH: With so many books out there that try to tap into a reader's sense of fear and dread, how did you go about coming up with something new for people to be scared of?

JCH: I've thought about this a lot. What I'll often do is I'll play the What If? game. What would be a good idea for a story? Because I love science fiction, but frankly, I really enjoy writing science fiction set in present day, I think that it's far more accessible for a reader to read a story that takes place now, that features kind of futuristic technology than to set a story 100 years from now, when there are flying cars. You can't really intuitively identify with a flying car. I like to make things as accessible as I can for my readers.

I think that while vampires are hot ‚ they're clearly hot in the literary scene and in the movies right now, lots of supernatural terror ‚ the future of fright is in technology. Constant variations on Pandora's Box. A great many of the ideas I have for future books have to do with technology gone bad. And it's that five-minutes-into-the-future technology, so while it may be completely preposterous, it seems likely.

JH: So you take on the role of a futurist, the guy who's anticipating stuff that could realistically happen, because real is scarier. What sources do you mine when you're doing that?

JCH: Ray Kurzweil is still a really good source of inspiration. His most recent book, The Singular is Near, is a story bible for shit that could go wrong. He looks at it in a very optimistic way, as he should. This guy is a bona fide futurist. I'm just a futurist wannabe. He's a leader in the futurist space, and I look at his optimistic projections and figure out ways to ruin the world with them.

I also listen to a radio program that I subscribe to as a paid podcast, called Coast to Coast AM. This is a late-night talk show that either tells the truth about a great many conspiracy theories ‚ 2012 and the Mayan calendar and UFO abductions ‚ or it's just great entertainment.

JH: So it's right up Kilroy 2.0's alley.

JCH: He would listen to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM, absolutely.

JH: Is finally having 7th Son in print anything like you imagined it would be?

JCH: This is living up to my current expectations, and the expectations I've had for the past few years. Before I finished writing 7th Son, I had the great mis-notion, as all newbie writers do, that all you need to do is finish writing the book and send it to somebody, and then everything magically happens and you get a check for a million dollars. Which is the biggest heaping pile of bullshit that you'll ever, ever think. I think that releasing my work in podcast form, and the vociferous promotion that I had to do with that, and the networking and the hard work, that has managed my expectations. Just because you build it, or in this case, print it, that doesn't mean people will come. A lot of this is me continuing to do what I have done for the past three and a half years. I haven't even had time to process the idea that this book is going to be on shelves.

JH: Did you have each character's backstory completely worked out before you knew you were going to write the 7th Son: 7 Days prequel stories?

JCH: One of the things I knew I couldn't do was write sequel content. The second and third books have already been written. Writing stories‚ and I have a great many of them outlined in my head‚ that take place after Book 3 wouldn't make sense, because no newcomer can really appreciate that. So I decided to take the story back and write stories that took place two weeks before the events seen in 7th Son: Descent. I wanted to give an opportunity for readers to experience the life of the clones before they were clones. The moment your novel starts is when your character's life is changed forever, and in the instance of 7th Son, I took that quite literally: in the first chapter, I kidnapped all of my clones. They were all ripped away from their normal lives, and so we never really saw their normal lives.

Did I know these people's lives when I started writing 7th Son in 2002? Not entirely. But I saw this as a great opportunity to flesh out what I did know about them. I don't write full character sketches for my heroes. I don't know how well that serves a novel. If you're spending more time writing biographies of your characters than you are writing your book, well, you'll never get your book written that way. What you see on the page is often just about all I know.

For more on J.C. Hutchins and 7th Son, visit JCHutchins.net.

Download a Special Edition 10-Chapter .pdf excerpt of 7th Son: Descent here now!


Get the full novel in your google reader here until at least November 3rd, 2009.

TV hitmaker J.J. Abrams has a new series premiering this Tuesday (September 9) on Fox. Fringe is about the weekly investigations of a trio of paranormal investigators –– an FBI agent and a father/son science team to be precise. It begins with a plane crash (that's worked out well for other shows),... more

TV hitmaker J.J. Abrams has a new series premiering this Tuesday (September 9) on Fox. Fringe is about the weekly investigations of a trio of paranormal investigators –– an FBI agent and a father/son science team to be precise. It begins with a plane crash (that's worked out well for other shows), and reveals deeper conspiracies as the subsequent investigation unfolds.

A sci-fi fan, as evidenced by the previous TV shows he developed (Lost and Alias) and by the fact he was picked to direct the new Star Trek movie (XI), Abrams accepts the legacy of shows like the The X-Files that precede Fringe. There's more than just that swimming around in his mind though.

"I love The Twilight Zone and Nightstalker and Cronenberg films and Crichton movies," Abrams said. "All these things connect in some way and X-Files is right there at the top of the list. It wasn't like, 'Okay, let's do The X Files again.' It was, 'What kind of show is something we would tune in to see?' I thought we would get slammed doing the David Cronenberg/Altered States stuff because for me that was always something I was obsessed with when I was growing up."

Week to week, the show is in the hands of head writes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and producers Jeff Pinkner and Bryan Burk. It's Abrams' name telling people to watch though, and he took a break from editing Star Trek to try to explain Fringe. Like the best episodes of Lost though, it only leaves us with more questions.

Question: At this point, everyone looks forward to a new J.J. Abrams show. How cool is it to be the brand yourself?

J.J. Abrams: Well, every time someone says, "Oh my God, I love that Lost episode," I always say, "Damon Lindelof runs Lost. He's the guy who's on that show."

Q: But we still say your name.

JJ: I think that it does happen and I do everything I possibly can to make sure that people are realizing that A, it's not me alone. B, in cases like Lost, it's not me now at all. It's Damon and Carlton [Cuse] running that show. In the case of something like Fringe, Alex and Bob and I sat in a room and came up with this together. I didn't write this and then say, "Hey guys, wanna be part of it?" We did this together which is why I said to Fox early on, it's important even in the publicity of this that people know that. I feel like I never want to be in a situation where the people with whom I work and who I love and get to work with again and again and again resent me for attention I don't deserve. So on something like Fringe, I feel like I am thrilled to be part of the team, but it's a team.

Q: Are you worried about making another complicated show that people might have a hard time following?

JJ: Lost has garnered a certain reputation for being a very complicated show and one that you have to watch every episode. Fringe is in many ways an experiment for us, which is we believe it is possible to do a show that does have an overall story and end game, which Fringe absolutely does…We can do a show that has that, so that there's a direction the show is going and there's an ultimate story that's being told, but also a show that you don't have to watch episodes one, two and three to tune into episode four.

I feel like, especially with Alias, which by the way had the craziest storyline where she was a good guy working for the bad guy but the bad guys were pretending they were good guys, it was definitely a show that while I so loved working on that show and miss it, I can see how it was difficult. This show you have a different sort of paradigm. Week to week there will be stories. You can tune in and just watch that, but there will be, over the course of a season, and then the series itself, bigger arcs of story. So I think we're trying very diligently to be a show that doesn't require the kind of insane absolute dedication to a series that if you miss an episode, you truly have no idea what's going on. Hopefully you'll want to see every episode because they'll be exciting.

Q: Already there are some subliminal blips on the screen. What are they?

JJ: It's something that we're doing for people who care to figure it out and follow it, but it's not something that a viewer has to consider when they watch the show.

Q: So far it doesn't seem there are any frogs on the show, so why are they all over the ads?

JJ: It works simply as sort of weird eerie imagery, but these images will be part, as you'll even see in the pilot, there will be references within the show. So it's not disconnected from the series. It's not like the ad campaign and there's the show. It's part of the code of the show.

Q: Do you have the whole seven year plan mapped out like they did on Lost?

JJ: We have the long term story and we're sort of saying, only because if you start to say seven years, it's a very difficult thing to even wrap your head around. What we're doing now is saying five years, just for us. The truth is, it's one of those things that my gut is that the flexibility required when you do a series, I think allows for the kind of characters and stories that you would never anticipate.

Q: Will you demand an end date like Lost?

JJ: I think that once we see where it's going, in terms of what other elements are there, there will be a place where maybe we will say, "Give us an end date so we can tell the story right." Because I do worry on a show like Fringe that if we don’t have the opportunity to really know the pace at which we should be telling our story, it could become one of those things. We've all seen series where it should've ended after season six, or they should not have done those last two seasons or that last year was a disaster. That's the last thing you want is for the thing that resonates at the end to be like [makes fizzling out noise].

Q:How have you felt to see Lost ramp up this year?

JJ: Well, I obviously know what the story is but what's amazing is to watch the work that not just Damon and Carlton but the whole writing staff and cast and crew, to see the work that they do from the outside. It's weird. It's a little bit like seeing your kid in college or graduating or working or whatever. Literally, that feeling of watching your kid playing baseball and you're like, "Oh my God, look, he's out there. I have nothing to do with it. Yeah, he's my kid and I threw around with him but that's what he or she is doing." I feel like to watch the show, I feel completely connected to it and yet I'm not working on that show week to week, so to see what they're doing, I'm amazed at the work that they do. I call Damon and I'm just blown away by how good he is.

Q:How involved with Fringe will you be able to be with movies in production?

JJ: Well, we co-wrote the first episode together. We are all very involved in breaking all the stories. This is the first show that I've been a creator on since Lost. I care desperately about it. For me, I'm going to be deeply involved in the show in writing or doing rewrites when necessary, or breaking stories and certainly in t he story arcs of the show. But we're all going to be very involved.

Q: Will you direct one?

JJ:I can't wait. I so look forward to it. I feel jealous that I didn't get to do the pilot.

Q: Do you have any regrets about letting others take the reigns of shows like Alias?

JJ: It's a weird thing. At a certain point being lucky enough to direct a movie or something, where you're controlling what it is and how it looks, is a very different thing, when you do a show, when you create the show and all of a sudden, episodes six, seven, eight, it's its own thing. If you, and I am, comfortable with working with incredibly talented people who deserve a shot and who are really good at what they do, who even kind of help launch a certain story…then it's incredibly fun. It's never exactly how you'd want it to be. If you were working with someone who's writing a story for a newspaper or online whatever, and you say, "Well, here's the kind of thing I want you to go do," and they went off and did it, it would never be what you would do. But if they were good, they'll do things that you would never come up with and they would elevate certain aspects of it and maybe not get certain things as well but to me, it's a collaboration. The question is, are you excited? Do I like having the collaboration? Again, I feel blessed to work with people like this and Jeff and Brian. It's a great group.

Q: How is Star Trek going?

JJ: That's coming along. Almost done with that.

Q: Why didn't you take Star Trek footage to Comic Con?

JJ: Well, [the studio] said they're not going to take anything, not G.I. Joe, not Transformers 2. We have well over a thousand visual effects shots. It's a huge thing so I'm very disappointed because the characters are so good, the actors are so good. I would have been psyched just to show some of the stuff that's about the people because it's not really about the visual effects. But with so little done, and this is a big strategic decision on their part, so I was disappointed.

Q: What was the biggest challenge of taking on that franchise?

JJ: I think the biggest challenge was trying to make it relevant to now. To do it despite it being Star Trek. I don't think it's enough to say, "Oh, it's Star Trek." It's a question of how do you make it something that would be what it wants to be, even if it hadn't been a series before.

Q: And how do you?

JJ: Well, you invest completely in the characters and you tell a story that is good, regardless of the setting in a weird way. I think that’s what we found, with Alex and Bob's script, and the cast was so good, you love these people so you'd go with them anywhere.

Q:Where do you want to maintain the spirit of the show versus updating it for new audiences?

JJ: I think what's so funny is these devices that everyone's holding, in the show would have been insane fantasy. Now everyone's got them. We all have the iPhone that does more than the communicator. I feel like there's a certain thing that you can't really hold onto, which is kind of the kitschy quality. That must go if it's going to be something that you believe is real. Our Star Trek is not parody, so the idea of maintaining character relationships, the dynamic between the characters. I never saw how Kirk and Spock became so connected, and that's what this movie does. It does it with the entire family of the Enterprise.

Q: With Zachary Quinto, is Spock a hunk now?

JJ: If Zachary's your cup of tea, yes. Zachary brought a gravity and an incredible sense of humor, which is a wonderful combination because Spock's character is deceivingly complicated. The revelation for me watching the movie, when I finally got to watch the whole thing after working on sequences, was that he is extraordinary. He was doing things I didn't even realize while we were shooting, these amazing things to track his story.

(image) Help SuicideGirls spread the word about our newest App in the iTunes store Seduce A SuicideGirl and enter for your chance to receive a free iPod Touch! Meet the sexy Zoli Suicide in a comic book shop and if you make the right choices—you will get a sexy, 17+ make-out session, but if you make... more

Help SuicideGirls spread the word about our newest App in the iTunes store Seduce A SuicideGirl and enter for your chance to receive a free iPod Touch!

Meet the sexy Zoli Suicide in a comic book shop and if you make the right choices—you will get a sexy, 17+ make-out session, but if you make the wrong choices you will get shot down by a SuicideGirl in 10 different humiliating ways!

Written by Anthony Zuiker, creator of the CSI franchise, directed by Troy Miller, executive producer of Flight of the Conchords and starring those naughty, internet, art-sleaze superstars the SuicideGirls. This app was shot and created specifically for the iPhone & iPod Touch. It's SuicideGirls version of a Japanese Dating Sim or one of those kids books where you could choose what happened next by making different choices. A little funny, a little sexy, and maybe a little goofy, this is the closest you will get to dating a sexy girl who lives inside your iPhone.

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Jesse Hughes loves women. I mean, he really loves women. If you read the first of our Eagles of Death Metal interviews with Joshua Homme, you may have got the impression that the boys, who grew up together in Palm Desert, are shameless flirts. That's doubly true with Hughes, the second half of this... more

Jesse Hughes loves women. I mean, he really loves women. If you read the first of our Eagles of Death Metal interviews with Joshua Homme, you may have got the impression that the boys, who grew up together in Palm Desert, are shameless flirts. That's doubly true with Hughes, the second half of this fun-loving act.

An old-school Southern charmer (Hughes's family moved to California in 1979), when he's not exercising his powers of seduction, he spends much of our interview impressing upon me how wild and wicked he truly is. However, the effect is ruined and redemption is found with an unexpected phone call from his mom.

While a polite, well brought-up boy, who wears clean underwear and socks (more on that later), lies not far beneath Hughes' rock & roll veneer, he does have the odd bad habit his mom's not yet managed to iron out -- tardiness being the one that's most pertinent to our interview. Having cancelled then rescheduled our little tête-à-tête, Hughes is running nearly an hour late by the time he finally calls in.

Jesse Hughes: Sorry it took me so long to get hold of you baby.

Nicole Powers: Well good things are worth waiting for, is that not right?

JH: I hope so. I hope I'm to be that reality for you.

NP: So the new album, I was going to start with the cover 'cause the imagery is kind of interesting, a bloody heart being squeezed by a well manicured hand, with blood red nails digging into flesh.

JH: Well, basically my heart is forever going to be in the clutches of women.

NP: Your buddy was telling me it was because the album is dedicated to the heartland.

JH: Heart On definitely came from that, but the beauty of rock & roll is there's nefarious and cross-purposes often, do you know what I mean?...Ultimately the reason it's called Heart On is because the heart of Eagles of Death Metal belongs to women everywhere.

NP: You smooth talker you. The cover's also got an old school heavy metal vibe to it hasn't it?

JH: We wanted an album that looked liked our favorite records. I want to feel like I did something that belongs to be put up with my heroes you know. However presumptuous that may be, it's a goal that I think is worth fighting for.

NP: So who were some of your heavy metal heroes?

JH: I remember the first concert I ever went to. My dad took me to see KISS and Ted Nugent at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in 1976. I remember thinking KISS, their show was insane, but I remember even being six years old and knowing that when Ted Nugent came out he rocked heaviness from his songs without fire and spitting blood. I didn't think one was better than the other...they were both heavy but different.

NP: You wrote this album on the road. Were you writing in the back of a bus?

JH: Oh yeah, it's like living the dream. Eagles of Death Metal really has only been about two best friends having the shits and giggles good time of their life...Our fantasy has always been to do it Led Zeppelin style. Led Zeppelin did all their shit on the road. When they were touring they'd write and record. So when Queens did the first leg of their tour around the States I went on the bus with them and it was awesome...This album, just to record it was a fucking dream because we got to do all of these things that we'd always fantasized about.

NP: Talking about finding your dreams, in one of your songs you say you had to sell your soul. Do you feel like you had to?

JH: Well, you know the price of admission is what it is I guess. I never felt like I had to, but I've had the nickname The Devil my whole life, and I've always believed in letting the facts dictate the terms of your decisions, and if it looks like an Indian, and smells like an Indian, then it ain't fucking John Wayne. So that being said, I knew coming into rock & roll that it weren't no fucking Bible study, and since every world must have a god, I knew it probably wasn't the holy lord that I go to church and worship and so I just figure, price of admission, I wanna play.

NP: It's hard to be rock & roll in this day and age. We're in the dull era of the well-behaved rock star.

JH: You're absolutely right. Danger; You can't have guaranteed results, you can have everything be safe, but you also need to have a modicum of decorum, you know what I'm saying? I mean, when the moment seizes me, I go for it but the consequences for those moments are so extreme now, you know what I mean. You can't throw a TV out of hotel room anymore without going to jail.

NP: This is true.

JH: What I like to do is throw it and make it look like it came from someone else's room, and call the front desk and complain and watch as they go to jail and know I've done something really evil. Just kidding.

NP: Experts at throwing TVs out of windows know that you need a very long extension cord, so when you throw the TV out the window you can have it switched on with the volume set to high. That way you have a sound and light show as it's falling.

JH: That is bad-ass baby. Or you could connect it to a car battery, so when it landed it actually really exploded. When we get done with this interview you and I need to set a date where we can do some rock & rollin'.

NP: I'm no amateur rock & roller.

JH: I wouldn't mind chasing some night with you darling, I can tell you that right now.

NP: So you say your nickname's The Devil. I guess I should ask how you earned that name.

JH: Joshua gave me that name when I was thirteen...I used to get picked on a lot, and when I would get picked on severely, or if it really made a point to me, I would get vengeance, but I would get vengeance in the way that I could, which was mostly clever and all consuming. Joshua once witnessed me in the moment I was about to enact vengeance upon someone, and he just said, "you're the fucking devil dude," and it stuck.

NP: You have a history of devil worshiping tracks on your albums: "Chase The Devil" on Peace Love Death and "Kiss The Devil" on Death By Sexy. What's the most satanic song on this album?

JH: You know the first description of the devil in the Bible, and of evil in general, is very interesting, and it's this: Now the serpent who is the more subtle of all the creatures of the garden. You're the first person who's ever almost accurately nailed what I think is those songs. Like "Kiss The Devil" -- "Who will love the devil? Who will sing his song?" In the South there was an old concept of evil spells simply being put into songs to get the people to innocently sing along. But if you call the devil, whether you believe in him or not, he will eventually show up. On this album, the devil is almost in every song, and now he's more subtle than all the creatures of the garden.

NP: And you're hoping that enough people play the song backwards at the same time you're going to have some kind of rising from the dark side.

JH: Led Zeppelin did it baby, why not us.

NP: So is it worthwhile spinning the album backwards?

JH: I would like to ask every person out there to spin it backwards, and I want to know what they get 'cause they might hear messages I can't hear and I want to know if the mother ship is calling me or if it's going to be hotter in hell for me than everyone else.

NP: So what would your idea of hell be?

JH: I think it's eternal falling. I think it's being cast into a pit that has no bottom. And it's a place of heat, and gnashing of teeth, and ghouls in the darkness stomping out at you, and grabbing you, and tearing at your flesh forever. That's what it seems like to me.

NP: Talking of going to hell, your music's very Hollywood-centric, women-centric, and rock & roll centric. Is it because that's your life?

JH: It is. You tend to write what you know. And this album especially, it's Hollywood-centric, and it's not celebrating the worst elements of Hollywood or the pretenses and the sliminess. I experience Hollywood at night, normally after the bars close. I'm a night creeper you know. Hollywood, L.A., The Valley, the 101, Laurel Canyon, [they] become alive. I kinda understand how the Red Hot Chili Peppers write a song with L.A. as almost a romantic character in it.

NP: I get pissed off that so many people rag on L.A. because it's a fucking great place.

JH: It is man, it is. It's just, the problem with L.A...It's been infiltrated by a very bizarre self-deceit. No one's from L.A., they're all coming there for one reason, to be famous. There's nothing more self-interested or self-centered than that ever. So you've got a bunch of people pretending that they're not there for fame, when everybody is. Everybody's pretending like they're not caring more than anything, and that can fuck everything up, and it brings out the worst in people no matter what.

That's why when I show up in L.A., it's like, fuck, this is Hollywood, I want to make some money, and I'm going to sell my songs to commercials. Fuck yeah man, I ain't pretending like I'm here to save whales. It ain't no fucking Bible study. I came here to shake my dick and have a good time, and Hollywood has really let me do that I gotta tell ya.

NP: But the flip side is that some of these songs deal with loneliness too.

JH: Yeah, this album, you know, as much as I talk like a tough guy, I was married square before rock & roll came and took me. It really did take me. I didn't do anything to be in a band. I'm a romantic too. I love women. My mother's probably the greatest person I've ever known...My concept therefore of women is not that sort of bizarre boys club chauvinistic shit. I like girls, I hang out with girls, I love women, I think they're fucking amazing. So for me, when I get sweet on a girl, I get interested and invested, and then Hollywood makes it easy to get hurt even if someone doesn't mean to hurt you, do you know what I mean?

So yes, this album was a weird album because Joshua really wanted me to [include] "Now I'm A Fool." That song was hard for me to put on the record because for me Eagles is about "everything's rad," and "check it out I'm dancing," but I guess that doesn't really stop that, it just demonstrates the raw human a little bit I guess.

NP: It gives the album balance.

JH: I typically write most of the songs for the record before we start to record you know, and Josh was like, we need an "Already Died," we need a song to give this album some depth. And I was experiencing a romance in a way with a friend of mine who actually is one of my best friends, and the song started really with me making an adult decision, like the only way I'm going to be friends with her is if I stop pursuing the romance. I started to get to the point where I saw that maybe I was threatening one of the few true friendships that I've had. That's a really big fucking decision to come to, you know, and so I started writing this song. Music, or any art, has a way of approximating something, so that song is sort of an approximation of that moment with me.

But it's also got the joy of women. Like "High Voltage," I wrote that for Kat Von D, because that fucking girl's bad ass. I was spinning one night, Hollywood rolling, it was like five in the morning, she was still at her shop with a couple of people, her High Voltage shop, and I came rolling in, we had fun. I'm home by seven in the morning and I'm sitting thinking what a fucking rad night that was. I love this job. Bomb, "High Voltage," and then it came out, do you know what I mean? Rock & roll for me is Parliament and Funkadelic, and that's what that song sounds like to me. I was trying to butt fuck the Rolling Stones with Parliament

NP: I think you achieved it with that song.

JH: Why thank you darling.

NP: Mick Jagger's ass should be feeling really sore right now.

JH: It should be raw and bruised, and you should feel very good about yourself Jesse.

NP: So what's the plan tour-wise? You've toured with some crazy people over the years.

JH: Oh yes. Right now we're on tour with The Hives, and we have Joey Castillo drumming. Fucking badass.

Oh my god, my mother's on the other line. Let me just tell my mother I'm going to call her right back. Hold on. Don't go anywhere.

NP: I won't.

[break]

JH: Hello. That was my mom and my son. My son was on tour with me for the last four days, he's my little rock & roller, and when he left last night with my mother it was very heartbreaking for me. I hate it when he leaves you know. And so my mom just picked him up right now and he was calling me and he was like, "Dad when I woke up this morning I wanted to cry because I wanted to be with you. But I was like, I've got to put on a brave face because my dad would want me to do that. So I just wanted you to know that when I got to school I wasn't crying."

NP: Aah.

JH: What do you say to that shit? You know like here I am on this interview trying to seem like this badass rock & roller, clearly trying to flirt with you, and here my son knocks me at my feet.

NP: It was actually at the point that you didn't let your mom go to voicemail that I knew that the devilish shit was a bit of a façade.

JH: It's got a reality to it, but my mother, she scares me more than other peoples' moms, you know what I mean? When she gets pissed: I have an old school, old fashioned kind of Southern mother who was brought up in the sixties generation so she's hip, but to her there's right and wrong boy, and you just don't cross the line. So when my mamma calls it's like, "Oh shit, it's mom, everyone hide the drugs," you know. But I'm in my own house.

She's been staying at my house and I've just got my new collection of pornos, and I'm watching them, and the funniness and the weirdness of being in your own home, and being a grown fucking thirty-something year old dude, and scrambling for the remote to try and switch the fucking TV/VCR button before your mom walks in -- it's pretty funny.

NP: So does she still do your laundry?

JH: She does, twice a week. But again I come from the theory that a family is bigger than you, and it doesn't matter exactly where you live. My mother's house is two miles from mine but we're a family. My father's dead, they divorced before he died, so I got to look out for my girl.

NP: And moms like to be able to fuss over their sons.

JH: Absolutely, that's half of it. If I'm going out in the cold, and as I'm putting on my jacket she'll tell me to put on a jacket. I've just got to let her do that shit.

NP: And she makes sure you go on stage with clean socks.

JH: And underwear –– no shit! We had a laundry facility at the venue we played at, and I was able to do my laundry. She comes off the tour bus with my bag and says, "I noticed you've got your jeans, I wanted to make sure you got your underwear and your socks clean," and I'm like, "Oh fuck, did you just say that in front of the guys? Not in front of the guys mom!" Sometimes I find myself dong that too, "Ah mom, not in front of the guys."

NP: You'll always be twelve in front of your mom.

JH: That's like with anyone. You're always going to be the thing, it's how you were introduced, you know, and I was introduced to my mother as her baby child.

NP: So does your mom support your choice of career?

JH: She loves it. When I sing the song "Whorehoppin'", it has the words "shit goddamn" in it, she winces, every time, I can see it. She stands at the side of the stage, and every time I would talk to the crowd and every time an expletive would slip out I'd find myself automatically looking to the side of the stage and going, "Sorry mom!"

I think there should always be a line you don't cross in anything...Cussing in front of your mom, you don't have to do that. It's like taking the time to go into a relationship just to cheat seems really fucking pointless to me. It lets everybody know that you're going to fucking cheat on the closest person to you, so in business you're probably going to cheat too.

NP: So, bottom line, it doesn't matter how rock & roll you are you just can't cuss in front of your mom.

JH: I like that. That should be a song. Real rock & rollers don't cuss in front of their mom. Like a billboard, or a public service announcement with me with the F word being blocked out of my mouth.

NP: A YouTube public service announcement.

JH: Yeah, a YouTube video of "You don't cuss in front of your mother."

NP: You make the video and I'll post it.

JH: And then you and I will post it and can eventually have our night of rock & roll chasing the night into Hollywood.

NP: I was reading an anthropological book called Watching The English, and it had a chapter about flirting. Flirting in England is a very different thing to flirting in America. Flirting in England is actually good manners; It acknowledges that's someone's attractive and it's a mechanism to help the conversation flow.

JH: What it does is politely cater to the realities of men and women, and their real different needs.

NP: It's a subtle form of flattery. It doesn't have to be about sex, it's a matter of etiquette.

JH: My job is to flirt, in a way. That makes total sense to me. That is an awesome way to put it actually darling, and I think I'm going to steal that from you.

NP: And the interesting thing is, in England, the more upper class you are the more it's ingrained, whereas the working class were always told that if they didn't follow the Ten Commandments to the letter they'd burn in hell. It was a way of keeping them down.

JH: That's a fact... I remember in the South, which remains still very English in a lot of ways...I'm Jesse Everett Hughes IV, so I come from a really old Southern family, and the notion of the mistress was an accepted thing amongst I guess you would say the higher classes. A southern gentleman would have his kids, have his plantation or whatever, and the wife was respected in the right way, but it was just a sort of an unspoken agreement that everyone understood what a mistress was. It's not necessarily something I subscribe to, but it's an interesting way to understand or to see how people can actually like live and let people be people. An unrealistic expectation is only, and will ever be, just that -- an unrealistic expectation.

NP: I should let you go because you have your son to call back.

JH: I don't want you to let me go baby.

NP: Well, if you love someone you have to set them free.

JH: [laughs] That was good girl. I love you for that one. That was good.